Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915

Resnick Pavilion

October 2, 2010–March 27, 2011

Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 celebrates the museum's groundbreaking acquisition of a major collection of European men's, women's, and children's garments and accessories. The exhibition tells the story of fashion's aesthetic and technical development from the Age of Enlightenment to World War I. It examines sweeping changes in fashionable dress spanning a period of over two hundred years, and evolutions in luxurious textiles, exacting tailoring techniques, and lush trimmings.

Highlights include an eighteenth-century man's vest intricately embroidered with powerful symbolic messages relevant to the French Revolution; an evening mantle with silk embroidery, glass beads, and ostrich feathers designed by French couturier Émile Pingat (active 1860-96); and spectacular three-piece suits and gowns worn at the royal courts of Europe.

The exhibition is curated by Sharon S. Takeda, Senior Curator and department head, and Kaye D. Spilker, Curator, LACMA's Costume and Textiles department. This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

As we bid adieu to Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915, we have one more noteworthy tribute to the sleeper hit of the Resnick Pavilion inaugural season. Jean Claude Wouters, a dancer and artist who once took part in a ballet in Brussels in which he wore a crinoline very much like those that give structure to some of the garments in our exhibition...